(Old) News about Sir Clive

The english computer magazine "Personal Computer World" (PCW) celebrated the 20th anniversary with a special May issue 1998. The "bigger than ever" issue with three CD-ROM (one from AOL) showed a ZX81 and SPECTRUM on the title page among other machines. On CD-ROM the ZX81-emulator from Paul Robson and the Speccy emulator Z80 from Gerton Lunter. In the magazine a review of the past 20 years with pictures of ZX80, ZX81 and SPECTRUM and of course a statement from Sir Clive Sinclair about his views of IT-developement in the past times. (nothing about ZX-TEAM, what a blame :-)))

Sir Clive Sinclair, British computing pioneer:
"When I started out, I was just interested in getting people interested in computers. It was very exciting then. There was a lot of innovation. There's no technical change now - it's all just Wintel stuff. It's just all got bogged down. The designs are very clumsy nowadays. They're not taking risks at all, they're just making the same sort of machines. The only breath of fresh air is Psion. They're terrific and they go their own way. Windows CE is a hope, as well.
I thought computers today would be used for the same kind of things they were used for then. I could see them becoming ubiquitous. But what has disappointed me greatly has been how little change there really has been. Take parallel computing - it's ridiculous, it should have happend by now. Computers should be hundreds of time more powerfull than they are now. They're also absurdly expensive for what they do. Very little of the price is from processing power. I don't use the internet at the moment. I get frustrated by the speed. If they would sort that out, then I would use it. But I think it's a most marvellous thing, it's amazing what can be done with it. I just don't want to use it while it's so slow."

I'm a little bit disappointed, he his grumbling about Wintel stuff, but seems to have no idea himself for the future of computing. Wasn't he a computer pioneer? (past perfect???)
Though I think he isn't wrong with his view. Remember the progress that came into our life with ZX81.

Here is his new adress:
Sinclair Research Ltd, 7 York Central, 70 York Way, London N1 Tel:(+44) (0)171 837-6150, Fax:(+44) (0)171 278-3101